Research has shown that parent-child engagement in math activities has a significant positive impact on children's mathematics achievement. Yet, studies also show that parents' mathematics engagement with their young children is largely limited or uninformed. As evidence mounts supporting the importance of kindergarten mathreadiness and its role in the future success of students, it is critical that researchers study the ways in which the home numeracy environment (HNE) shapes children's math knowledge in the early years. The present study, through a digital survey and semistructured interviews, used the RESET Framework (Role, Expectations, Skills, Efficacy, Time) to examine the HNEs of 23 parents of four and five-year-old children. The RESET Framework is a new tool that allows for critical examination of the factors that most influence the math-activity participation of parents, and how these different factors may interact with one another to impact parent-child math activity. The results of this study provide researchers with new tools and approaches for studying the HNE, potentially leading to the creation of better parent-engagement programs, increases in parent-child math activity, and higher math achievement for children -especially for those children most at risk for lack of school-readiness.

Adaptive instructional systems (AISs) hold tremendous promise for addressing learner variability at scale. Many AISs are grounded in Benjamin Bloom’s (1971) Mastery Learning approach, which delivers differentiated instruction, appropriate scaffolding, and feedback to ensure each child masters each concept or skill before moving on. (Bloom’s 1984) framework for learning went beyond the immediate interactions of learners and the AIS. He described “four objects of the change process” that must be addressed to significantly improve student learning: the learner, the materials, the teacher, and the learner’s environment, where parents/caretakers are a critical component, especially for young children. This paper describes a learning engineering approach to craft a Personalized Mastery-Based Learning Ecosystem (PMLE) that uses all people, processes, data, and networked connections to create new capabilities, richer experiences, and unprecedented educational opportunities for children and their families. This ecosystem treats all individuals within the system as learners (child, parent, teacher, etc.) whose knowledge and expertise can be enhanced to benefit the child’s learning. The PMLE enables parents and teachers to become empowered “agents” of change by providing them with knowledge, tools, and evidence-based strategies to support meaningful and effective interactions with the child, all driven by real-time data about the readiness of the child. This paper presents a vision of how AISs can move beyond working solely with the child to become more robust ecosystems that empower all agents of change to optimize personalization and ensure long-term success of all children at scale.

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Children differ greatly in what they know and are ready to learn when they enter school. However, when their individual needs are assessed and addressed, even very young children can learn and can greatly surpass grade-level expectations. This chapter discusses the partial implementation of a research-based personalized mastery-based learning ecosystem (PMLE) that uses My Math Academy, a games-based learning program and personalized teacher resources to deliver learning outcomes for young children at scale. The implementation of the My Math Academy PMLE with nearly 1000 prekindergarteners at a high-need school district resulted in significant learning gains, including gains beyond grade level, despite large learner variability in students' prior knowledge and learning progress. Teachers also felt empowered to deliver differentiated instruction, building on the personalized learning students experienced through My Math Academy. Results showed that the PMLE framework can help close equity gaps and help children excel in ways that defy expectations.

Metacognition, or the ability to be consciously and intentionally aware of one's thinking and the ways in which one's thinking impacts one's learning, has been shown in the research to be a critical component of learners' abilities to learn effectively. One area of research on metacognition has focused on the role of metacognition in video games, specifically in massively multiplayer online games, known as MMOs. Through examples of metacognition in a popular video game such as World of Warcraft or in Adventure Academy, a new educational MMO for children ages 8–13 years old, this chapter highlights the ways in which MMOs can act as spaces that support the development of metacognitive behaviors through the components of planning, monitoring, control, and evaluation, toward improving learning overall.